California: LA QUINTA: City to rename fire station after fallen Paramedic

The city of La Quinta will hold a ceremony to commemorate the renaming of a fire station after a firefighter who was killed in the line of duty in 2013. La Quinta’s fire station number 32 will be renamed “Christopher Douglas Memorial Fire Station” during a 2 p.m. ceremony at the fire house, 78-111 Avenue 51.

Douglas, a 41-year-old Temecula resident, was struck July 5, 2013, by a Ford F-150 pickup truck on the shoulder of eastbound I-10 at the Monterey Avenue onramp, where his engine truck stopped so firefighters could put on their gear, California Highway Patrol Officer Stephanie Hamilton said.

Douglas — an apparatus engineer and paramedic who had been with the Riverside County Fire Department for eight years — was driving the engine and was hit by the pickup when he got out of the rig. He and his crew were responding to a rollover crash on I-10 near Washington Street, Hamilton said.